Cleopatra’s bracelet.
“It was me. I lied. I used you for all the wrong reasons, legitimized by the love for a woman who betrayed me the entire time. I feel horrible, and I am trying to hold it together, but I am scared that the moment I let myself feel that anger, that I am going to burn down the world and pull you with me into the flames.”
I take the bracelet.
“Thank you for telling me,” I say, and nothing else. I am not even mad. I knew she'd taken it; I knew I’d have to cover it up and risk everything for her.
“You should arrest me,” she says and holds up her wrists.
“No,” I say.
“Stop trying to save me,” she says, raising her voice. “Your entire life, you try to fix people, save them from themselves, but you can’t save everyone!”
“I can save you,” I say and brush through her hair to push it behind her ear.
“And sacrifice yourself for it,” she says. “I won’t let you.”
She knows me too well. I was aware she does, but at this point, I am certain she knows more about me than I know about her.
“Nothing you could do would have changed what happened with your sister,” she says, and my heart stumbles several beats. “You can stop trying to fix everyone else. It doesn’t change what happened with her.”
“But—“
“No,” she says. “You listen to me now. You convinced yourself that you can set things right when you stick to yourmorals and rules, when you bury yourself in work, and, most of all, when you try to save everyone by giving everything you have, including yourself. But it will never be enough. You cannot save someone who either can’t or doesn’t want to be saved.”
Tears fight their way down my cheeks.
Because it hurts.
It hurts because she is telling the truth.
A truth I can’t acknowledge, because if I do, I’d have to acknowledge I have spent years wasting my life for something that got me nowhere. And the thought of it is unbearable to me.
“No,” I say and shake my head, taking a step back, but she doesn’t let me.
She grasps my face.
“Asher Tolliver died because your sister is mad. She has severe psychosis because she was abused and raped, and had to go through things no human should go through. But you are not responsible for her. Tolliver was responsible for what he did. And your parents for taking care of your sister. Not you.”
“But I am her sister!” I shout. “I should have noticed, should have seen, should have protected her?—
A horrible feeling surges through me, as I am back when I found her after she didn’t come home for a week. Him, dead on the floor of that basement, her shaking and crouching next to him, naked, bruises and scratches all over her body?—
My stomach turns.
I can’t feel the guilt.
Of not being able to help her?—
“It’s all my fault,” I breathe out.
“No,” I say. “It’s Asher Tolliver’s fault. Just as Emily’s death wasn’t my fault, but her staging.”
I stare into her eyes, trying to understand her words, but my body won’t let me. I feel like falling into a depth without a ground.
“I’m here,” she says, and with her second hand cups my face. “I’m holding you. And I’m not going anywhere.”
My hands start trembling.
